Jonathan Edwards (theologian)

Jonathan Edwards (October 5, 1703 – March 22, 1758) was an American preacher, philosopher, and Congregationalist theologian. He is considered a major and original figure in American philosophical theology. His thinking, while wide-ranging, was grounded in the Puritan tradition found in the Westminster and Savoy Confessions of Faith. More recent scholarship highlights how his life’s work was built on ideas of beauty, harmony, and moral fitness, and how deeply the Enlightenment shaped his outlook. Edwards was a key figure in the First Great Awakening, leading some of the earliest revivals from 1733 to 1735 at his church in Northampton, Massachusetts. His efforts helped create a school of thought called New England theology.

At a 1741 revival in Enfield, Connecticut, following George Whitefield’s tour of the colonies, Edwards gave the sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” now a classic of early American literature. He is famous for books like *The End for Which God Created the World*, *The Life of David Brainerd*—which inspired many 19th-century missionaries—and *Religious Affections*, still read by Calvinist Evangelicals. Edwards died from a smallpox inoculation shortly after becoming president of the College of New Jersey in Princeton.

**Early life**

Edwards was born on October 5, 1703, the fifth of eleven children and the only son of Timothy Edwards, a minister in East Windsor, Connecticut (now South Windsor), who also tutored boys for college to supplement his income. His mother, Esther Stoddard, was the daughter of Solomon Stoddard of Northampton and was considered unusually intelligent and independent. Timothy Edwards owned at least one enslaved Black man named Ansars. Jonathan was prepared for college by his father and older sisters, all of whom were well educated. His eldest sister, Esther, wrote a semi-humorous tract on the immateriality of the soul that is often mistakenly attributed to Jonathan.

He entered Yale College in 1716, just before turning 13. The next year, he encountered John Locke’s *Essay Concerning Human Understanding*, which had a deep impact on him. During his college years, he kept notebooks titled “The Mind,” “Natural Science” (which included a discussion of atomic theory), “The Scriptures,” and “Miscellanies.” He planned a major work on natural and mental philosophy and wrote rules for it. He was interested in natural history and, at age 11, wrote an essay on the ballooning behavior of spiders. He later revised this text to fit the scientific literature of the day, and his “The Flying Spider” was accepted into contemporary scholarship on spiders. After graduating from Yale, he studied theology for two years but kept his interest in science. While many European scientists and American clergy saw science as leading toward deism, Edwards believed the natural world showed God’s masterful design. He often went into the woods to pray and worship, finding beauty and solace in nature.

Edwards was fascinated by the discoveries of Isaac Newton and other scientists of his time. Before becoming a full-time pastor in Northampton, he wrote on natural philosophy topics like light and optics, in addition to spiders. Though he worried about contemporaries who seemed focused on materialism and reason alone, he saw the laws of nature as coming from God and showing his wisdom and care. His sermons and theological works stress the beauty of God and the role of aesthetics in spiritual life. He is thought to foreshadow a 20th-century movement in theological aesthetics, represented by figures like Hans Urs von Balthasar.

From 1722 to 1723, he served for eight months as an unordained supply pastor for a small Presbyterian church on William Street in New York City. The church asked him to stay, but he declined. After two months of study at home, from 1724 to 1726 he was one of two tutors at Yale, running the college in the absence of a rector. The previous rector, Timothy Cutler, had lost his position after converting to the Anglican Church, and no replacement had been found after two years.

He partly recorded the years 1720 to 1726 in his diary and in a set of resolutions for his conduct written during this time. He had long sought salvation and was not fully sure of his own conversion until an experience in his last year of college, when he stopped feeling that the election of some to salvation and others to damnation was “a horrible doctrine” and instead found it “exceedingly pleasant, bright and sweet.” He then took great new joy in the beauties of nature and delighted in allegorical readings of the Song of Solomon. Balancing these mystical joys was the stern tone of his Resolutions, in which he was almost ascetic in his drive to live earnestly and soberly, waste no time, and keep strict temperance in eating and drinking.

On February 15, 1727, Edwards was ordained as minister at Northampton and assistant to his grandfather Solomon Stoddard, a well-known minister. He was a scholar-pastor, not a visiting one, and his rule was to study 13 hours per day. That same year, he married Sarah Pierpont, then 17. Sarah came from a prominent New England clerical family: her father, James Pierpont, was a founder of Yale College, and her mother was the granddaughter of a notable figure.